Mediation is a customary procedure ordered by family courts for civil suits relating to family law like divorce, child custody etc. The idea of mediation is to allow parties to dispute to sort out their issues between themselves without going through court procedures. All parties to mediation — mediator, petitioners, respondents, and their lawyers are expected to work towards that goal. Following is a brief explanation of procedure of mediation. 1. Mediation date and time is given by court to both parties – husband and wife parties. On the date of mediation both are expected to appear in Mediation centre …[Continue Reading]

Finally a favourable judgment to law abiding NRIs having children. A Delhi HC has ordered a child with UK passport to be produced before UK courts as ordered by UK court. The mother’s plea that it is not in best interest of child did not hold water with high court. The high court has said that since child was brought to India with father’s consent and understanding to return to UK, that must be done to begin with. Child with foreign passport cannot overstay in India

Below Delhi HC judgment lays down following important points in determining child custody and visitation rights: http://mynation.net/docs/276-2003/ Excerpts from judgment in italics followed by my understanding and comments: It has been noticed that the Guardian Judge does not follow a uniform practice in this regard in that sometimes the parent who does not have the custody of the child is granted a meeting of a duration of one or two hours in a month, that too in the uncomfortable and uncongenial environment of the Court, while in other cases weekly visitation or access for several hours is ordered. From above …[Continue Reading]

According to recent SC judgment, a precedent has been created in favour of law-abusing NRI spouses. Matrimonial ‘offenders’ can’t be extradited: SC It is known fact that India is not signatory to Hague convention which means child custody orders in foreign courts are not of significance in India. This means that an Indian parent who ‘abducts’ own child in foreign country and brings to India can’t be touched by laws of adopted country. Even if she/he has foreign court orders against her/him the orders cannot be enforced or respected while in India. So all NRIs who have abusive spouse have …[Continue Reading]

The guide to child custody for men has to be evolved from practical and real-life cases of child custody. There are few judgments and references available unlike lot of material on maintenance, marriage etc. Update March 15, 2016: this post was written many years back and many points are still relevant, like courts do not usually disturb de-facto custody of child. So if child is with you, then it is very important to retain physical custody of child till you get legal guardian status. As of 2016, based on changing views of law making bureaucrats and some of judiciary about best interests of the children of …[Continue Reading]

In this case from West Bengal, wife was denied maintenance under CrPC 125 since she had good income earlier and could not give any reasons why she was unable to maintain herself now. Maintenance was denied and court also mentioned the principle of “clean hands” with which party seeking relief has to approach the court. PDF of judgment at link below: rajesh-motwani-maintenance-denied-crpc-125 Main excerpt from judgment is given below: It is a settled principle of law that a party seeking relief must come before the court in clean hands. The petnr could have stated that she earlier had the source …[Continue Reading]

This 2007 judgment of Delhi court had denied maintenance to wife under Section 24 of Hindu Marriage Act (HMA). Basically she failed to disclose her own qualifications and that could be construed as coming with “unclean hands” in front of court. As of now, Delhi has a mandatory disclosure of income/expense/asset/liabilities affidavit for all cases filed in family court. Important grounds on which maintenance was rejected: In her entire application the applicant/ wife has no where stated that she is also an engineer graduate in the field of Information Technology and that she also joined the job after her marriage. Those seeking …[Continue Reading]